A Man With No Country
by Jameson Rook
Summary: For once in this life, I better do something right. Don't bury the voice that's not yet spoken. I'll challenge the flames, until this man with no country remains, Still caught in a world that won't stop burning. Right or wrong, this is where I belong. I've always belonged. If the truth be known, there's no place left to go." Written for Burner4Life No place I can go."


_**Disclaimer: Burn Notice and all of its characters belong to Matt Nix and the USA Network. **_

_**This fic is dedicated to **_**Burner4Life**_**for all of your encouragement. Thank you so much, I really appreciate your comment about my fics making your day easier. If I can do that for one person, it makes it all worth it. I'm third generation Irish-American, so when I started watching and found out Fi was Irish and heard about "Michael McBride", I was particularly happy. This is just a little diddy I thought up while listening to my favorite Irish rock band about how McBride might effect their relationship presently. **_

_"For once in this life, I better do something right._

_Don't bury the voice that's not yet spoken._

_I'll challenge the flames, until this man with no country remains,_

_Still caught in a world that won't stop burning._

_Right or wrong, this is where I belong. I've always belonged._

_If the truth be known, there's no place left to go._

_No place I can go."_

_"Man With No Country" Flogging Molly_

"Sometimes it scares me." Fiona whispered against my chest, her hands drawing patterns on my stomach. I opened my eyes and looked down at her curiously, my hand curling tighter around her shoulders and holding her against me.

"What scares you, Fi?" She sighed and turned on her stomach, her chin resting against my chest so that she could look up at me. She was silent for a long stretch until I reached up and tucked a curl behind her ear, letting my hand linger on the side of her face. "Fi?"

"You." She replied quietly. I opened my mouth to reply, a twist of anxiety curling in my stomach as I tried to figure out what I'd done to scare this beautiful woman. She lifted her hand and placed her silky finger against my lips to silence my protest before continuing. "You. This. Us." She gestured vaguely between us. Understanding finally dawning on me, I leaned down to kiss her forehead.

"What about this scares you?"

"I don't know. That night in the pub when I met Michael McBride, I knew that he was something special. Something...different. It's not often that you find a man that you think is utterly perfect for you. It's just a little frightening to care that much about someon." She chuckled, her hand splaying over my heart.

"You..." I swallowed around the lump in my throat. "Do you wish I was someone else, Fi?" She bolted upright and turned to look at me, her jaw hanging open in shock.

"Michael, how can you even ask me that?" She whispered, anger creeping into her voice.

"Well...I mean...you just said..." I stammered, grasping for words. I struggled into a sitting position, the dark purple bruising on the left side of my body from the shot I'd taken to Kevlar vest earlier that day protesting. I winced, and pressed my hand against the broken ribs carefully. "You just said that Michael _McBride_ was perfect for you."

"Michael, you _are_ Michael McBride." She replied, her brow still furrowed in confusion.

"No, Michael McBride is just a cover ID I used. Michael Westen is much less charming. Much less perfect." I grumbled, shifting out of the bed carefully and walked slowly into the kitchen. I pulled a glass out of one of the cupboards and filled it with water. I stared into it for a moment, not really wanting to take a drink of it, but not exactly knowing what else to do. I wasn't used to feeling so vulnerable, but Fiona had always been the one person who could break down all walls that I put up.

"In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not exactly perfect myself. If I didn't want to be with you, I would have left after that first day I got that phone call. Michael, it was just something I said, it didn't mean that I would prefer Michael McBride over you." She got herself up from the bed and stood in front of me, her hands framing my face, and her thumbs brushing over my bruised and battered cheek bones.

"Fiona, you don't deserve this life that I've drug you into. I..." I sighed and pulled out of her hands, running my fingers through my hair roughly. "My own country abandoned me, I can't go back to Ireland or anywhere else I've been to. I'm a man with no country. I'm just going to hold you back. Why are you staying?" I questioned, the words stinging even as they fell off my tongue.

"If you need to ask that question, you're dumber than I thought." She replied, closing the gap between us once again, and wrapping her arms around my shoulders. "I thought that this was something that I we didn't need to say because it was just understood, but I love _you_. Not Michael McBride, not any of your other covers. Sure, McBride was the one that I met and fell in love with, but Michael Westen was the man that I flew all the way to Miami to take care of."

"Fi, you flew out here to 'be here when I died' so that you could tell me what a bastard I was." I replied, looking down at her skeptically.

"Yeah, maybe that's what I said, but," She leaned in and made a show of looking around the loft before finishing the sentence with a sarcastically loud whisper. "I was _lying_." She smirked. "I came because I was worried about you, Michael. Believe it or not, I actually care about you, and I was worried that you weren't going to make it. I didn't want you to die alone, like..." She choked on the rest of the words, and I wordlessly pulled her into an embrace, knowing that her mind was with her sister.

"I'm right here, Fi." I whispered into her hair, kissing the top of her head softly. "I'm right here." I reached down and placed her hand over my heart, allowing her to feel it beating. "Please, look at me, Fiona." I muttered, hooking my finger under her chin and lifting her gaze to mine. "I'm not...I'm not going anywhere, Fiona. As much as I know I should, I _can't_. I can't leave you." I felt the hot burn of tears forming behind my closed eyelids as I leaned down and pressed my cheek to the side of her hair.

"I know, Michael." She whimpered, her fingers running through the tiny curls at the base of my skull. "I don't want to be anywhere but right here with you, Michael. That's all I've ever wanted."

There was a long silence between us as we simply held each other, neither of us wanting to break away. It had always been that way, though. We were like magnets attracting each other at every turn. I smirked to myself briefly.

"Well, now, that's not sayin' that ol' man McBride can't make an apperance now and then, Lass." I whispered against the shell of her ear, the Irish lilt coming easily and ghosting across her skin as it left my lips. She shuddered and her fingers dug into the tight muscles of my shoulder blades.

"Michael," She warned, her teeth grazing the curve of my jawline. "You have bruised ribs."

"Aye, that I do. What's your point?" I replied, leaning in to run my tongue over the column of her throat.

"I don't want to hurt you, but if you keep up this little game of yours, I make no promises about my actions." She replied, her own accent coming through like it did so many times when we were in the throes of passion. I grinned to myself, and stepped forward until her back was pressed against the wall. Grasping her hands with the arm on the good side of my body, I pinned them over her head and rolled my hips against hers, ignoring the flare of pain through my body.

"I don't expect any promises, Miss Glenanne." I growled in her ear, my tongue flicking over the lobe as I kept up the accent, knowing by the writhing of her hips against mine that it was driving her crazy. This was one of my favorite things about Fiona Glenanne; Watching her go from the composed, precision driven woman that everyone knew, to the writhing, moaning heap of melted bones in front of me was something that no one else got to see.

Something that few people know about Fi is that, just below her shoulder blade, there is a scar that dips into her skin, leaving a small indentation. It's from a piece of shrapnel that had marred her perfect skin when she was still working with the IRA and a nail bomb had made a bit more of a boom than she had been expecting. It was one of my favorite features about her, and I loved to nip at the small hollow.

It represented so much more to me than just one of the scars that made the beautiful woman in front of me who she was. It was something that reminded me that she was _mine_. Of course, that didn't mean that I owned her. Fiona Glenanne was one of those women that no man could own. But, she was something that I had in my life that wouldn't be run off by the shambles of the life I used to live. For a man with no country, she was home. She was the one thing in the world that I knew nothing could take away from me.

Fiona was the one good thing that I had done in a life that was marred with more bad deeds than anyone could even imagine. She was the thing that had saved me from myself on more occasions than one when I thought I was beyond redemption.

Every time that I sucked a bruise into that tiny scar, it was like marking a moment in our history that couldn't be erased. A trail marker that had led us to this moment. Michael McBride may have been the first step on our journey to here, but Michael Westen and Fiona Glenanne were the end game. No covers. No pretenses. Just...us.


End file.
